“You have not heard from Everard?” he asked.  She flushed.  “Do you think I’m an accessory after the fact?” she cried.

“No, no,” he said soothingly.  “Pardon me, I was thinking he might have written—­giving no exact address, of course.  Men do sometimes dare to write thus to women.  But, of course, he knows you too well—­you would have put the police on his track.”

“Certainly,” she exclaimed, indignantly.  “Even if he is innocent he must face the charge.”

“Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?”

“I do,” she said boldly, and looked him full in the face.  His eyelids drooped with a quiver.  “Don’t you?”

“I have hoped against hope,” he replied, in a voice faltering with emotion.  “Poor old Everard!  But I am afraid there is no room for doubt.  Oh, this wicked curse of money—­tempting the noblest and the best of us.”

[Illustration:  “She did not repulse him.”]

The weeks rolled on.  Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive.  From the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were too flagrant.  Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible to Clara from the first, she did not repulse him.

It is only in books that love lives for ever.  Clara, so her father thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy affection and casting it from her heart.  He invited the new lover to his house, and took to him at once.  Roxdal’s somewhat supercilious manner had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant.  With Tom the old man got on much better.  While evidently quite as well informed and cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart his superior knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than on the superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information in return.  Those who are most conscious of defects of early education are most resentful of other people sharing their consciousness Moreover, Tom’s bonhomie was far more to the old fellow’s liking than the studied politeness of his predecessor, so that on the whole Tom made more of a conquest of the father than of the daughter.  Nevertheless, Clara was by no means unresponsive to Tom’s affection, and when, after one of his visits to the house, the old man kissed her fondly and spoke of the happy turn things had taken, and how, for the second time in their lives, things had mended when they seemed at their blackest, her heart swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy and tenderness, and she fell sobbing into her father’s arms.

[Illustration:  “With Tom the old man got on much better.”]